of the latter class compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the burial-ground; for when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would always be faces behind the gravestones peeping at his black veil.  A fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead people drove him thence.  It grieved him to the very depth of his kind heart to observe how the children fled from his approach, breaking up their merriest sports while his melancholy figure was yet afar off.  Their instinctive dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught else that a preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of the black crape.  In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known to be so great that he never willingly passed before a mirror nor stooped to drink at a still fountain lest in its peaceful bosom he should be affrighted by himself.  This was what gave plausibility to the whispers that Mr. Hooper’s conscience tortured him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed or otherwise than so obscurely intimated.  Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him.  It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there.  With self-shudderings and outward terrors he walked continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul or gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world.  Even the lawless wind, it was believed, respected his dreadful secret and never blew aside the veil.  But still good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng as he passed by.

Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable effect of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman.  By the aid of his mysterious emblem—­for there was no other apparent cause—­he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin.  His converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves, affirming, though but figuratively, that before he brought them to celestial light they had been with him behind the black veil.  Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections.  Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper and would not yield their breath till he appeared, though ever, as he stooped to whisper consolation, they shuddered at the veiled face so near their own.  Such were the terrors of the black veil even when Death had bared his visage.  Strangers came long distances to attend service at his church with the mere idle purpose of gazing at his figure because it was forbidden them to behold his face.  But many were made to quake ere they departed.  Once, during Governor Belcher’s administration, Mr. Hooper was appointed to preach the election sermon.  Covered with his black veil, he stood before the chief magistrate, the council and the representatives, and wrought so deep an impression that the legislative measures of that year were characterized by all the gloom and piety of our earliest ancestral sway.